Hume, re Bayes? And knowing that Bayes likely was writing in response to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding? He probably figured it wasn't worth further engagement.
One big issue related to this is that, in many life issues, we can't put exact percentages of probability on priors. Ergo, we can't put exact percentages of probability on posteriors after getting new knowledge. Bayes' equation strikes me as halfway like Drake's equation in this way.
Plus, the Hume who wrote the Treatise as a Pyrrhonist probably never totally abandoned that. He may have retreated from that for "public consumption," but he never totally abandoned that. Ergo, his skepticism was likely in some way non-probabilistic all along.
The end of the Stanford section has broadly similar thoughts:
>>However, perhaps a Bayesian reading of Hume is altogether misguided and Hume subscribes to an empirical, rather than a mathematical, notion of probability found in the Baconian approach (Vanderburgh 2019). This would make Hume’s argument more plausible.<<
These have been great to read especially has I was unfortunately persuaded by headlines and casual browsing that Hume's reasoning here was "debunked" somehow (but never looked much into it)
Have you covered any theist / pro-miracle arguments against Hume that are based in a proper understanding of his maxim and conclusion? Would be curious to read those as well
Honestly no, because the entire literature has been pretty much poisoned against Hume in that pretty much everyone misunderstands him. We can thank C.S. Lewis and John Earman for that. This sounds conspiratorial, but pretty much all popular commentaries on Hume that are theistic and critical are bad. But always glad I can help!
I think they are different in that with causation, he says we view conjunctive events, with the salient theme being when we watch something happen we don’t see this magical thing called “causality,” we just observe some sort of change. God, on the other hand is an agent we somehow infer, but really can’t do so because we don’t see him cause anything (more so than normal things, as we can identify regular causation like me causing things, but not that much for God)
Hume, re Bayes? And knowing that Bayes likely was writing in response to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding? He probably figured it wasn't worth further engagement.
Contra this piece https://jonathanlivengood.net/Tanner_and_Livengood_MS_Hume_and_Bayes.pdf, I reject the claim that Hume was a normativist on the issues Bayes was addressing. Rather, he was a descriptivist. (The SEP article on Hume, better than the old one it replaced several years ago. See section 5.1, beyond the descriptivist vs normativist at top. for more. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#Mira
One big issue related to this is that, in many life issues, we can't put exact percentages of probability on priors. Ergo, we can't put exact percentages of probability on posteriors after getting new knowledge. Bayes' equation strikes me as halfway like Drake's equation in this way.
Plus, the Hume who wrote the Treatise as a Pyrrhonist probably never totally abandoned that. He may have retreated from that for "public consumption," but he never totally abandoned that. Ergo, his skepticism was likely in some way non-probabilistic all along.
The end of the Stanford section has broadly similar thoughts:
>>However, perhaps a Bayesian reading of Hume is altogether misguided and Hume subscribes to an empirical, rather than a mathematical, notion of probability found in the Baconian approach (Vanderburgh 2019). This would make Hume’s argument more plausible.<<
These have been great to read especially has I was unfortunately persuaded by headlines and casual browsing that Hume's reasoning here was "debunked" somehow (but never looked much into it)
Have you covered any theist / pro-miracle arguments against Hume that are based in a proper understanding of his maxim and conclusion? Would be curious to read those as well
Honestly no, because the entire literature has been pretty much poisoned against Hume in that pretty much everyone misunderstands him. We can thank C.S. Lewis and John Earman for that. This sounds conspiratorial, but pretty much all popular commentaries on Hume that are theistic and critical are bad. But always glad I can help!
You think Hume would place Causality and God at the same level of skeptical/supernatural? We don't see God or Causality, per Hume. Or naw?
I think they are different in that with causation, he says we view conjunctive events, with the salient theme being when we watch something happen we don’t see this magical thing called “causality,” we just observe some sort of change. God, on the other hand is an agent we somehow infer, but really can’t do so because we don’t see him cause anything (more so than normal things, as we can identify regular causation like me causing things, but not that much for God)